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HAS
ANYONE SEEN THAT EAST GERMAN BIATHLONER?

It was twenty-two years ago and my first chance
to experience the Olympic Games. The people
of Calgary left town so that people coming to their
city for the 1988 winter games could stay in their
homes. We were given a bag of engraved pins that
had silly bull logos to represent Merrill Lynch,
my company, and we were told how much fun we could
have trading them with total strangers. This tradition
started with the athletes who traded their event
pins with other athletes in the Olympic Village and
then spread to all attendees who wanted to get into
the Olympic spirit.

My first pin exchange was with another novice who
had a bag full of pins from ABC Broadcasting who was
representing his company. I asked if he would like
to trade for a “bull pin” and he said yes
since he hadn’t traded with anyone else and needed
to get rid of some ABC pins or his company exec’s
would think he is not mingling properly. Within
days I became emboldened to approach everyone and anyone
to foist my supply of “bull pins” for an
array of alien corporate logo metal that could be pinned
on my shirt. It didn’t take long for all the
type “A” personalities to see how many
pins and how prestigious, unique, and valuable pins
could be accumulated. My prize pin was to find
a Jamaican Bobsled pin early in the week before it
became a hot item. But my real target was to get a
Russian Hockey team pin.

Then came the day when we met an East German athlete
on the streets of Calgary. He was quite despondent
and I discovered he had competed in the biathlon. By
now my technique was down to just showing all my available
bull pins and hope that someone would take them off
my hands. He pulled nine or ten pins from his
logo uniform and held them out to me as if to say,
take anyone you want. Seeing a pin that had never
shown up before, it was a picture of a skier competing
in the biathlon. I asked if that would be ok with him.
He said sure, no problem. I was delighted and even
more so when he seemed pleased to have one of my pins
with the male bovine on the face of it. An observer
came up to me and informed me that the young man was
favored to win his event but came in fourth and would
face severe criticism back home for not performing
better.

When I realized that this was his “event pin” I
went back to him and tried to return it to him. If
this were me, I knew that I would want this at some
point in my life. He would not take it back and insisted
that it was better for me to have it. The symbol
of how we place unreasonable levels of importance on
sports is not lost to any of us during a week like
Super Bowl week. A new winter Olympics is about
to start up and after that there will be March Madness;
NBA playoffs; and soon we will start the marathon season
of baseball. What I have learned and what I wish to
share with you is that it is important to keep perspective
on what is important. Even at the highest level of
sports and secular society, our orientation toward
recognizing God’s presence and importance in
our life trumps it all!

Luke 9:23-24 (NIV) “And
he said to all, If any man would come after me, let
him deny himself and take up his cross daily and
follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose
it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will
save it.”